The Friendship Algorithm
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day four hundred and four: Emma may be the guidance counselor but sometimes she feels completely lost in their world.


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 18th cycle. Now cycle 19!_

**TV Tiles Cycle **- So this is Cycle 20! I wanted to do something special, so here we are! Some of you may remember a while back me asking for episode titles from tv shows. I've always found that a lot of shows have great episode titles, so this is how this cycle came to be. Each story will be inspired and titled after an episode from a different show. The influence of the episode may vary from story to story, not seeking to rely completely on it ;) You'll see...

**Today's Show/Title:** "The Big Bang Theory" - _The Friendship Algorithm_

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**"The Friendship Algorithm"  
Emma **

Sometimes it felt like they were all talking in some kind of code, following a roadmap she'd never seen. She was meant to guide them, and she did, but there was still so much of it that made no sense. Of course, she was the shy girl when she was their age, and everything was different… It still seemed impossible.

Some things she had come to understand over time, usually because in ways they had always been there. It was like she'd told Will, when he was trying to recruit for Glee Club… Follow the leader. What was interesting to them, it didn't appear to come out of… interest, not all the time. But the popular ones, they set the bar, walking around like they were fixing golden ribbons of approval to whatever they were into. After that, the rest would start to gravitate toward those "golden picks" without any questions, really…

She supposed that it didn't always have to be a 'bad' thing. She wouldn't say that the second half of the Glee Club fell completely within that category; there were other… reasons. But nonetheless, they had gone in there seeking one thing, the way followers of the 'gold' path did, and they had found something else in the process, something better, that brought a new joy to their lives. So no matter what she knew this had worked for them, and it could work out for the others in the end. It would do more harm than good if they didn't give them the benefit of the doubt.

But then despite the good outcomes for some of them, there were the others. And she'd see them out there, trying to do something that didn't bring them true joy, more often than not it brought them fear, misery and confusion, and she'd want to pull them aside and just ask them… What are you doing? Look at yourself, is this really what you want? But then most of the time they would not realize their own discomfort, or be too proud and too invested to admit it… It was her responsibility – or part of her responsibility – to keep an eye out for those, both in recognizing them and in making sure things didn't get out of control… She couldn't stand there and let people get hurt if she could step in and help somehow.

They all had this roadmap, apparently, from the moment they walked in the doors of McKinley High… and it just left her wondering, considering. They all moved so fast. There were friends and couples made and broken and rearranged so many times… It was dizzying, but she almost didn't have a choice hearing about it, from her daily interactions with the student body. Some days she'd be sitting there on the verge of asking them if they had some kind of chart to keep track of these things… Oh, why did you get in a fight with this one, I thought he or she was your friend… Well, not anymore, because of this person… But I thought you WERE with this person… No, I'm with THAT person, because of one thing and another… So this is why you got in the fight… No, it's this other thing, you wouldn't understand…

How it made sense, she didn't know, but they apparently didn't have total control of their own relationships, friendships or otherwise. They could be swayed, made to suddenly change what they felt. She saw it all the time, with friends… If they wanted to be popular, then there were just sacrifices they had to make… How friends could become so disposable for that little of a payout as popularity could be, that was really beyond her. And those people they'd leave behind, they would always be the true friends, the ones people like them… people like her… had to endure fake friends and disappointments in order to find.

Maybe she'd never understand how it all really 'worked,' but in a sense she was okay with it… She didn't see how it made sense now, and even with extensive knowledge given to her she didn't see how it would change the way she felt about it now. Her job was to help guide them, and she could do that just fine with her own perspective. She was another option, and she hoped some of them would see it and understand, see the bigger picture. Whatever 'map' they had, it was just a fragment… The roads continued to stretch out so far after high school…

THE END

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**A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
****In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
****always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!**


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